In the past 30 years the distribution of music, audio, photographs, video, films has changed faster through more standards than it had in the preceding 100 years. During that time digital media, namely CDs and DVDs, obsoleted analog media, such as vinyl discs and magnetic tape, before being obsoleted themselves with the rapid penetration of the Internet and downloading/streaming of digital data to a variety of portable and fixed electronic devices. Similarly analog radio and television are being replaced with digital formats and user expectations for quality being increased with the release of LED/LCD/Plasma screens and initially increased “lines” to 720 and then 1080 with high-definition (HD) whilst displays increased from typically 20″-36″ to 36″-54″ and above. At the same time digital media distribution saw rapid rise in piracy and copyright infringement as copying digital content was a rapid and simple process.
Accordingly, many organizations employ digital rights management (DRM) to protect their copyrighted materials although their use is still controversial. Corporations claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and that it can help the copyright holder maintain artistic control or ensure continued revenue streams. Those opposed to DRM argue that there is no evidence that DRM helps prevent copyright infringement and that DRM helps big business stifle innovation and competition. Proponents argue that digital locks should be considered necessary to prevent intellectual property from being stolen, just as physical locks are needed to prevent personal property from being stolen. Some opponents, such as the Free Software Foundation (through its Defective By Design campaign), maintain that the use of the word “rights” is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term digital restrictions management. Their position is essentially that copyright holders are restricting the use of material in ways that are beyond the scope of existing copyright laws, and should not be covered by future laws. In contrast the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other opponents, also consider the use of DRM systems to be anti-competitive practice but support that the content originator and user need legal protection.
Accordingly, today music downloaded from legitimate retailers such as Apple's iTunes™ store employs DRM to the degree that the content is restricted to a number of electronic devices so that a user may access the content from their smartphone, MP3 player, and laptop computer for example although the content is only downloaded once and must be transferred from one device to another by linking the devices electronically through an application, in the instance of Apple through their iTunes™ software. However, at present the penetration of portable electronic devices for video, film, and large multimedia content has been limited in part due to the issues of downloading and handling between devices individual files of hundreds to thousands of MB rather than a couple of MB per song.
At present multimedia content such as TV shows, films etc is provided through service providers in streamed formats but issues relating to service plans etc prevent users downloading such content to their portable electronic devices such as smartphones, PDAs, cellphones etc as a single Hollywood movie may absorb the users entire monthly data plan.
It would therefore be beneficial to provide users with a means to download large multimedia content files and render these upon a variety of portable electronic devices. It being further beneficial to allow the downloading of multimedia content to be securely stored within a portable memory device allowing the user to render the content with their electronic devices or the electronic devices of others and that such rendering was constrained by digital rights associated with the multimedia content and memory device. It would also be beneficial to allow the user to select their rendering options in terms of duration of their rights for number of renderings or time frame for renderings as well as providing the ability to associate additional content with the multimedia content at the time of rendering or downloading such as sub-titles or elements within the multimedia content.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.